Professor Betsy Stanko, OBE, was formerly head of evidence and insight in the Mayor of London’s Office for Policing and Crime. For over a decade, she worked inside the Mayor’s Office and the London Metropolitan Police Service’s Corporate Development, establishing a social research function alongside performance analysis for improving crime and justice in London.

In her first life, Betsy was a professor of criminology, teaching and researching at Clark University (US), Brunel University, Cambridge University and Royal Holloway, University of London (where she is an emeritus professor of criminology). She is a visiting professor at UCL’s Department of Crime Science and Security and City University London’s Sociology Department.

From 1997–2002 she was director of the ESRC Violence Research Programme. In 2002, she joined government from academia in the Prime Minister’s Office of Public Services Reform. She was awarded an OBE in 2014 for her services to policing.